San Francisco's Board of Supervisors should shelve the idea of renaming the city's airport after the late Supervisor Harvey Milk. The name San Francisco International Airport - or SFO as it's known on luggage tags - is a perfectly fine name for a venue that has evolved over the past 86 years from cow pasture into one of the nation's premier gateways to Asia and Europe.

Supervisor David Campos introduced a charter amendment Tuesday to put the name change ("Harvey Milk San Francisco International Airport") on the November ballot.

Campos claims to have the votes to make it happen, and there is little reason to doubt him. "Let the voters decide" is a supervisor's favorite profile-raising tool: It shines attention on the sponsor, stirs a civic debate, while leaving it for voters to think through the implications. Campos claims that the name change could cost as little as $50,000, which is millions shy of reality when everything from signage to global marketing is calculated.

Campos, who has aspirations for the Assembly, has suggested that renaming the airport after Milk would send a message internationally "that members of the LGBT community are treated with dignity and respect."

Slow down, supervisors.

It would be a mistake to allow an airport renaming to become a referendum on the legacy of Milk, the civil rights pioneer who was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone on Nov. 27, 1978. Milk is duly revered in this city for his courage and contributions in advancing gay rights.

It is no disrespect to Milk's historic consequence to note that an airport does not have any apparent connection to his life and work. He has been memorialized with his name on schools, parks and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been the subject of a biography, an opera and a Hollywood film. The state has officially recognized May 22 as Harvey Milk Day; there has even been a push to name a Navy ship after Milk, a naval officer in the early 1950s.

The fact that other U.S. airports are named after figures of lesser accomplishment or no greater nexus to aviation does not justify San Francisco renaming its airport after Milk. The renaming of Orange County (John Wayne) and Burbank (Bob Hope) airports after entertainers - or the naming of Washington National after the president (Ronald Reagan) who fired the nation's air traffic controllers when they went on strike in 1981 - assures that Harvey Milk San Francisco International Airport will not be the most head-scratching decision of all time.

But "others are worse" is never a fitting standard for this city.

"San Francisco" is a name with meaning and magic. It stands alone as a place of natural and architectural beauty that attracts and accepts people of uncommon imagination and unconventional lives, like Harvey Milk, in pursuit of dreams that can take flight only here.

It should stand alone, simply and proudly, on the name of San Francisco International Airport.